


In More than Name

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Big Brothers, Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester in Love, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Family Feels, First Kiss, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, Sam and Dean find out about Adam, Sibling Love, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 21:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4495848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon divergence on the premise, "What if John told Dean and Sam when he found out about Adam?"</p><p>'We were tight-knit boys, brothers in more than name. You would kill for me, and knew that I'd do the same. And it cut me sharp, hearing you'd gone away. But everything goes away; yeah everything goes away. But I'm gonna be here 'til I'm nothing but bones in the ground.'</p><p>-- Always Gold, by Radical Face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In More than Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Linden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/gifts).



 

_One Year Ago — August, 2001_

  


Dean’s standing somewhere behind him.

  


Sam doesn’t need to look to know his big brother’s got his hands in his pockets, standing in a corner with his shoulders hunched, looking miserable and defenseless like he hardly ever does when anyone else is around to see. So Sam doesn’t turn, doesn’t look, keeps folding his shirts into his duffel, fighting down the panic that rises like bile when he surreptitiously adds Dean’s ratty old Zeppelin tee to the pile, tucking it quickly out of sight under his second pair of jeans. He blinks rapidly. The shirt looks stupid on Dean anyway, it doesn’t fit right, and it’s Sam’s favorite thing to sleep in. Dean won’t miss it.

  


There are other things he will miss, though, so Sam clears his throat and forces out the words. “I’m taking my butterfly knife and the Beretta and a box of silver bullets, leaving my shotgun and crossbow and everything else except two hundred dollars and that picture you gave me of mom and dad—“

  


“Sammy.” Sam’s hands go still. Dean draws in a deep breath. “Come on, man. Why…why are you doing this?”

  


“I don’t have a choice, Dean. You know why.” Sam swallows hard, fingers dragging up and down the pearl-inlaid handle of that beautiful gun Dean gave him for his birthday. What a difference two years make; on the day he tore it out of the newsprint wrapping he’d laid into his brother and left the weapon on the motel table, untouched, for days. Now it’s his favorite thing to hold, even if he’s hoping he never has to again. The detailing is as beautiful to his eye as the deliberate way the summer freckles dance over Dean’s nose. “You heard Dad.”

  


“Not what I’m asking, Sam.”

  


“I don’t have a choice,” Sam says again, and zips the duffle, hoists it over his shoulder. He packs the thing, lives out of it, but he hardly ever carries it himself. It’s heavy. “I’m. I gotta. I’m leaving, now.” Sam shuffles his feet, finally looks at his brother. Dean looks like a ghost, a skeleton standing there with nothing in his hands, nothing on his back.

  


“Come on,” Dean says finally, and his bones clatter together as he stirs himself, swipes the keys off the table. “I’ll drive you to the bus stop.”

  


At the station, no, actually, on the ride there, Dean starts to lose it.

  


Sam knows the instant it happens, when Dean suddenly flips on the radio and cranks it up, though no volume could be high enough that Sam can’t hear when his brother’s breath turns ragged and choppy. Sam can’t look at him, but from the corner of his eye he can see Dean’s chest heaving, see his shoulders shaking. Watches as he lifts his hand to his eyes once, then again, and then he’s pounding the steering wheel like he wishes he could beat Sam into submission, steer him as easily as he does the car he dotes on like it’s a person, like it’s his best friend. Sam’s jaw aches and he can’t breathe with how still he’s holding himself, leaning his head against the window and wishing he could put his hands over his ears. He’s sweating so bad the back of his t-shirt sticks to the leather seat like even the Impala isn’t going to let him go if she can help it.

  


They pull into the station way too quickly and Dean’s out of the car and pulling Sam’s duffel out of the back seat before Sam’s even unbuckled. He takes a second, alone in the car, to drag in a deep breath and hold it until he can exhale and it won't come out a squeak or a sob. He scrubs his hands over his face and climbs out. Dean’s standing there, hunched into Dad’s old jacket even though it’s still like a hundred degrees out and it isn’t Dad’s jacket anymore, is it, it’s Dean’s; the old leather molded to his form and warmed by his touch, the seams Sam used to love dragging his fingers over, the pockets that are deep enough to hide anything, and Dean looks so small it makes Sam’s knees go watery. He’s hot and cold all over, the skin of his arms and thighs tingling with nervous energy. Dean’s not even trying to stem or hide the tears that are blurring his face, and he’s not looking at Sam until Sam’s hands are curled in the collar of the jacket, knuckles white, thumbs rubbing over the stitching and they’re eye to eye now. The inevitable caught them up over the summer like Dean always said it would and he grumbled at having to buy Sam new clothes again but grinned at how Sam blushed whenever Dean called him a Sasquatch.

  


Dean’s forcing himself to breathe steadily now, in-hold-out, the way dad taught them. Taught them to keep quiet when they were hurt to avoid drawing attention: stay quiet, safe stay, stay alive, keep hunting. There are words in Dean’s eyes, questions, and his lips are parted but that’s just to take in air and behind them the other passengers are boarding the bus and the panic from before has Sam by the throat as tightly as Dean’s got him by the wrists and though his eyes are painfully dry the world blurs around the edges and tips sideways when he presses forward, presses his lips to Dean’s. Dean’s lips are chapped from the summer heat and the breath that rushes between them, ballooning into Sam, tastes very faintly of whiskey and soda and Dean’s fingers on the back of his neck are so painful that Sam squeezes his eyes shut and just breathes, feeling everything.

  


“Last call to San Jose!” and Sam’s jerking away and Dean’s biting off sounds that might have been _Don’t go_ and Sam’s picking up his lead weight bag and lifting a hand to the driver who looks impatient and this is it, this is the goodbye he’s been longing for and dreading for months, the one he never expected to be sealed with the taste of Dean in his mouth and the sound of Dad’s banishment ringing in his ears.

  


\---

  


_Three Months Ago — May, 2002_

  


“I. You. Uh,” Dean coughed, looking at their father, looking him in the eyes. “We have a, uh…me and Sam, you say we have a what, now? Sir?”

  


“A brother, Dean. A half brother. I have another son.”

  


Sam felt like he was operating on two different planes. Out of nowhere he flashed back to the time when he was fourteen and a hunt took them to San Francisco, his first time in California. He’d never known the famous Bay Bridge was a double-decker, that people going to and from the city travelled on different levels, oblivious to their fellow travelers. It had blown his mind for some reason and all he remembers from that trip was how patiently Dean had put up with him talking about cantilevers and suspension mechanics. He was watching Dad, now, watching Dean, taking in their words while fixating on the solid details of the room around him. The dirt in the corners and the streaked and grimy window and Brady kept saying he was going to borrow some Windex from that RA who had a crush on him but it hasn’t happened yet and _fuck_ but the place was a mess. His room was a disaster, honestly, worse than their motel rooms after those long weeks when Dad left them alone. Dad, sitting on Brady’s bed and telling them he knocked up some woman twelve years ago and Sam listening but not responding because he was embarrassed to be there. Ashamed of his messy room and greasy hair, of what it all looked like. This mess was not what he ran away for. Dean had been eighteen that first time they came to California and it was just about the last time he’d been really patient with Sam. After that Dean had decided Sam was old enough not to be a bitch, and any time Dean indulged him it was when Dad was out of town or, with Flagstaff fresh in mind, when Dean was afraid he’d run away again.

  


And he had. Run all the way to California, run as far away from the life as he could get without falling off the end of the world.

  


Should have run a little farther, Sammy, because here they were again. Here was his father, who’d banished him nine months ago, here was his brother, who’d driven him to the bus station. Here they were, sitting in his cramped dorm room and dropping the biggest bomb on him since they told him the closet monster was real.

  


Only, this time, it wasn’t with Dean sitting beside him, nodding along with their father’s words because he was already in the know. This time it was Dad sitting on Brady’s bed and Sam sitting on his own, Dean standing by the dirty window. 

  


“A brother,” Dean repeated, and the word somehow sounded different this time than it had the ten million other times Sam had heard him say it.

  


“Yeah,” Dad said, nodding at Dean but not looking at him. “I just found out. Name’s Adam. Adam Milligan, he, uh, he’s in middle school. Good grades, I guess,” Dad said, glancing at Sam like he’d prepared this tidbit of information just for him, but looked away before he could really see him, before he’d have to pretend not to see the look on Sam’s face.

  


“So, what,” Dean said, and Sam locked his eyes on his big brother, focused on how he didn’t look any different than he had last year when Sam pressed their lips together at a bus station in the broad light of day. Sounded different, though. His voice rising with every word until he was shouting. “So that’s it? Dad, we had a shifter on the hook, and you let it go and brought us here for this? What is this kid, some fucking wizard? Because unless he’s got some magic powers gonna help us get that sonofabitch demon, I’m taking the car and you can _walk_ back for all I care!”

  


“Dean,” Sam was on his feet and reaching for him, covering his brother’s hand on the doorknob without thinking about it. He’d never heard Dean talk to Dad like that and it was making his heart hammer up high in his throat, panic on the back of his tongue all metallic and sharp. “Chill out, okay? It’s…” He glanced at their dad who was just looking down at his hands. _Okay, then_. He took Dean’s elbow and dragged him out into the common room.

  


In the harsh fluorescent lights, Dean looked terrible. Sam wanted to ask him if he was hurt, what that shifter had done to him. Wanted to ask if he’d been eating anything other than Gas n’ Sip gourmet, wanted to ask if he could help.

  


“Dude,” Sam said, ducking his head to try and catch Dean’s eye. The anger blazed there made _Are you okay_ an impossible question. “Dean, listen, yeah it’s a bombshell, but it’s not the most unexpected thing ever, you know? Dad disappears for weeks at a time and you taught me yourself how to steal condoms out of his bag. I mean, those things are pretty safe but they’re not idiot-proof and Dad’s an idiot sometimes. It makes sense, right? It’s not like all this time we thought he was some kind of monk avenging your mom’s memor—“

  


Dean had him by the throat and shoved up against the rough brick wall before Sam could move, which pissed him off. Definitely that — definitely it was nothing more than anger, and Sam shoved it down ruthlessly. Before he left for college, he and Dean had been 50/50 on taking each other down. Dean’s strength versus Sam’s own height, reach, raw power and teenaged anger. He choked against Dean’s hand and lashed out, flailing more wildly when Dean evaded him like he knew exactly what Sam was going to do.

  


“My mom, Sammy? ‘ _My’_ mom?”

  


Dean was fucking scary, as it turned out. Sam had always watched the bad guys shrink away from him; he’d never been that guy himself. He gasped and went still against the wall.

  


Dean let up on Sam’s throat because, duh, it was Sam, and if Dean actually hurt him his next move would be to jump off a bridge. Sam wheezed in a couple breaths, watching Dean but holding himself still.

  


“I’m sorry, Dean. I am. I didn’t meant that.” His voice was thick, like talking around a mouthful of syrup. Dean rubbed his hand over his mouth again and looked at him. His eyes on Sam’s felt like permission so he said, “I just, I meant, the way we lived. It’s not a surprise, right, that this would happen.”

  


Dean turned away, pressing his fingers into his own temples. “A half-brother, man,” he muttered. “Another _brother._ How am I supposed to deal with that, huh, Sam? He springs this on me, that I got some half-brother he says he didn’t know about? The kid’s like twelve, what am I s’posed to do with him?”

  


“Uh,” Sam worked his jaw over the multitude of things he wanted to say, staring at Dean. “I mean. Why the hell do you have to do anything? Did Dad, like, tell you you were taking him in or something? Come on, Dean. The kid’s a civilian, leave it alone.”

  


“Are you shitting me? Sammy, are you fucking trying to make a stupid joke right now?” Dean was right back up in his face, and Sam drew up to meet him. 

  


“For fuck’s sake, Dean, could you be a normal person for like a second? Lots of kids have dads they don’t know, this Adam dude is probably fine, all right? It’s not like he’s in any more danger than any normal person on any given day. You know?”

  


Dean snorted and looked away, but didn’t move out of Sam’s personal bubble. Sam half-reached for him but dropped his hand when he felt the brick wall at his back snagging the soft material of his sweater, the new one he’d bought after his first work-study paycheck, the first nice thing he’d ever bought for himself. He moved carefully out from between the wall and his brother and resisted the impulse to try and feel over his own back, make sure the sweater hadn’t been ruined. “What?” Sam asked, pulling at the hem and realizing Dean had muttered something.

  


Dean groaned and rolled his eyes. “I said, he’s a _Winchester._ Of course evil shit is gonna track him down.”

  


Sam frowned. “Dude, he’s not, though. He’s not a Winchester, he’s a, whatever. Mulligan. He’s not one of us, so don’t push it. Look.” Sam followed through then, stepped in close to lay his hands on Dean’s chest, knuckles against his collar. “I’m begging you, don’t drag him into all this. Okay, Dean? Kids growing up without a dad, there’s a million support groups for that. For kids like us? There’s nothing.”

  


Dean flinched and pulled back from him, smacking Sam’s hands away. They stood looking at each other, and finally Dean reached for Sam, coasting his fingers over him like he had a thousand times before, but this time there was no injury to check for, no wound he could find with his hands.

  


“See you around, huh, kiddo?” Dean said, going for bravado and landing on tired and heartbroken. Sam turned his face away, not wanting to see the look Dean was giving him.

  


He stayed in his dorm lounge for another ten minutes, sprawled awkwardly on the stained sofa, unable to distinguish the sounds of his fellow freshmen coming and going from the sounds of his family leaving without him.

  


 

—

  


Summer break caught Sam off guard. It’d been a week before finals when Dad and Dean showed up, and after they left he’d sat alone in his room for awhile, feeling more lost and miserable than he had since that bad night a month into first semester when the shine wore off his new adventure and he realized simultaneously how alone he was and how bad at holding his liquor. Thoughts of _Dad and Dean and Adam_ buzzed through his mind now like static and he thought for sure there was no way he was going to pass any of his tests. Knew for a fact that he’d fail out, they’d take away his scholarship, and it’d be back to the Impala and the salt and the silver.

  


He tried to imagine sharing the back seat with anyone but Dean, and found that he simply couldn’t.

  


He aced all of his exams, made the Dean’s List (very funny), and was asked to move into one of the coveted off-campus housing arrangements; the only underclassman who was, as far as he knew. All of this made a kind of river with a fast current that he dove into, let it carry him along, never tried to make it back to the shore and follow up on what had happened when Dean and Dad showed up. He couldn’t live with that kind of loneliness, with what he’d felt after Dean left that night. And he wouldn’t — he just couldn’t — think about the rest of it.

  


A brother. He had another brother. They had more family, out there.

  


The phone rang at ten in the morning, their dorm phone, as Sam and Brady were packing up, throwing things into boxes in a panic because they’d left it tot he last minute. Brady answered, said “Hello” and “what” and “who” a couple times, then just looked at Sam and told him that it was Wes Antilles calling for him.

  


“It’s _Wedge_ ,” Sam said, jamming the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he kept cramming his clothes into his duffel. “What do you want?”

  


“Dude,” Dean sounded ten kinds of offended, and possibly a little drunk. Sam glanced at the clock and hoped that Dean was somewhere where it was at least five o’clock. Maybe London? “ _I_ know that. Your dumbass roommate is apparently a dumbass. Who doesn’t know who Wedge Antilles is?”

  


“Dean,” Sam shifted the phone, holding up a black t-shirt to Brady, _Yours or mine?_ Brady shrugged and Sam sniffed it. It reeked of Axe and he threw it at Brady’s head. “I’m really busy. What do you want?”

  


Silence stretched out at the other end of the line, and Sam held his breath.

  


That night, when they just showed up, it’d been the first time Sam had seen his family in nine months. The first time he’d heard his brother’s voice in eight. When Sam arrived at Stanford, he’d called Dean right away. And Dean had called him twice a week after that until the night Sam picked up the phone already tipsy, in the process of getting wasted at his first official college party, and Dean had been so…there wasn’t one word to describe what he’d been. Angry and then scared, hurt and then proud, giving Sam advice and then telling him never to act on it. Wanting to know what he was drinking, who was around him, if Sam had any weapons on him and what his exit plan was. If he’d managed to grope any girls yet and reminding him that _No means no and if she says stop, you stop, man_. Asking how Sam could have done it, could have left him. Asking if Sam missed him. Asking if Sam was gonna get over his tantrum and come home anytime soon. Asking, asking, asking. And Sam had said no, no, no.

  


“Sam,” Dean finally said, and Sam realized Brady was looking at him weird. Realized he’d been standing in the middle of the room with one arm tucked around his own stomach for he didn’t know how long. He ducked out into the hall.

  


“What?”

  


“Sammy, we gonna…we gotta talk about this, okay?”

  


Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “What’s there to talk about?”

  


Dean gave an aggravated moan. “You know I swear you’re just like him. What do you fuckin’ mean, what’s there to talk about? We got a blood relative just a couple hours away, we got family we don’t know, and you both act like it’s nothing.”

  


“Dad didn’t seem to think it was nothing,” Sam shot back, glaring at a cigarette burn in the carpet. “Dad _came here_ , Dad _talked to me_ after freaking disowning me. It seemed pretty freaking important to him that night, or why the fuck would he have dragged you off a hunt and come to tell us both in person, huh?”

  


“Sammy,” Dean groaned. “The man was in shock. You shoulda seen him. He…dammit, Sam. We were ‘bout to head out on a hunt when he gets this call, okay? We’re outside Fresno and when he comes back in the room he’s white as a sheet, man. Couldn’t get a word out of him until he said he had to tell me something. No, that’s not — he said ‘I gotta tell you boys something.’ Like he forgot you weren’t there. I asked him, ‘do we need to go get Sam,’ I knew that’s why he sniffed out that job anyway, Sammy, it was time for him to check up on you again—“

  


“To check up—hang on,” Sam interrupted, bracing a hand on the wall in front of him. “What do you mean?”

  


Dean made an impatient noise. “He swings by, okay? Make sure you’re all right. Anyway, he gets in his truck and I’m in the Impala and every time I get beside him on the road I can see he’s talking on his cell, I figure he was talking to that woman, Kate’s her name by the way, Adam’s mom. Figure she was telling Dad about him. He got us a motel outside Palo Alto and was drunk by the time I caught up with him. I had to drive him to you, Sammy.”

  


Sam picked at a crack in the wall. His fingernails were dirty. “What happened after you left?”

  


“Nothing, man. Fuckin’ nothing. Back to the motel and he slept it off and left while I was out getting breakfast. Met up with him next day and wasted that shifter and now he won’t talk about it no more. You. Fuck it, Sammy, you shoulda. You.” _You fucked up again, Sammy. You should have left with us, Sammy. You should have helped me get my family back, Sammy._

  


“Dean,” Sam edged in, “Dean, listen. I get that…I mean, I know this is a big deal, okay, I do. But I just don’t see…I mean, what is there to talk about? The kid caught a break, if you ask me, not having to grow up the way we did. Not growing up with Dad.”

  


The dead silence on the other end of the line made his jaw ache, and when Dean hung up it sounded like a gun shot.

  


  


—

  


Dean sent him a text: _Kid’s cute_. _Turns 12 in a couple months. Chubby like you were. Kinda looks like me besides that._

  


And Jesus Christ was that not okay.

  


Sam was in St. Louis, staying with some friends of Brady’s in the awkward interim before he could move into his next room. All of his possessions fit into two duffel bags and when, very late at night after a joint and too much sangria, Sam had admitted that yes, actually, that was _all_ of his stuff, he didn’t have a room full of childhood memorabilia in some white picket setup “back home,” his friends had talked to their mom and she had taken him shopping. It was horrible. _The kindness of strangers_ , he tried to remind himself in the checkout line at IKEA where Zach and Becky’s mom had, with a smile Sam wanted to believe was genuine, told him it was her pleasure to gift him with a bed and a desk and chest of drawers for the unfurnished room he’d be renting next semester. He’d been sleeping in her spare room for two weeks and was the only kid in the house to get up before nine AM and she had, she claimed, come to depend on his company in the morning. She made coffee and he fried bacon and they talked about Israel and Palestine, Bush and Bin Laden and the Board of Education v. Earls. She was the first woman who wasn’t a teacher he’d ever known for this long, and he found himself watching her like a hawk when she was interacting with her real children, how she’d nag Becky and interrupt Zach, and thinking about it every night he resolved to be more irritating, to be thoughtless and inconsiderate, more like a real kid.

  


More like what Adam was probably like, Sam thought, staring down at his phone. Taking his mom for granted, being demanding and needy. Everything that had been beaten out of him and Dean. _You need something? Go ask your brother._ How many times had Sam heard those words. Trying to open a stuck jar of peanut butter or confused about how he woke up from a dream he didn’t understand with his shorts all sticky and his heart racing. _Go ask your brother._ Dean was right, he’d been chubby when he was twelve. He’d started growing later than Dean, that was all. And they were on the road a lot that year; tons of crappy processed food and sitting on his ass in the Impala hadn’t helped. It wasn’t cool of Dean to bring it up like that, though, he should know what kind of hell Sam went through that year. Awkward and miserable and ugly and always the new kid and flirting with the edge of the eating disorder that he’d mostly had under control until it was a week before finals and suddenly the two people he thought had forsworn him are there in his room and oh by the way he has another brother. He’s not the baby anymore.

  


Yeah — because that’s what was wrong with Dean’s text. How he was still teasing Sam about something that happened almost a decade ago.

  


He wanted to ask how Dean knew that about Adam. Had he he seen a picture? Was he there eating dinner with this Kate lady and her kid right now? Where was Dad? Why was Dean telling him this?

  


“You okay,  chéri?” Mrs. Warren was helping him pack, putting shipping labels on the sleek cardboard boxes with the disassembled pieces of his future  life while Sam rolled and folded his clothes and tried to act like he wasn’t a pro at fitting his life into two neat duffles and a faded backpack.

  


“Me? What? I, yeah, why?” Sam smiled at her, felt how tight the muscles of his face were.

  


She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed him briefly, then turned back to her task. Sam tucked his phone back into his pocket.

  


“Was it bad news?” she asked. “The message you just got?”

  


Sam huffed a very unamused laugh. “Not exactly. Just. My brother.”

  


“Ah,” she said wisely. “Brothers are tricky. I have three and I birthed one.”

  


Sam’s genuine laugh surprised both of them. “Yeah? You have brothers?”

  


“Oh,  chéri ,” she said, shaking her head. “I have brothers like you wouldn’t believe. But tell me about yours. Is it just the two of you?”

  


“ _Jesus,_ ” Sam muttered, dropping what he was holding and pacing away, going to look out the window and running his hands through his hair.

  


“Sam?”

  


“God, I, I’m sorry, Mrs. Warren. I just. There’s some…we have some…family drama going on right now.”

  


“Who doesn’t?” She said drily.

  


Sam snorted. “Yeah, okay, fair point. But. It’s like…” He turned to look at her, and made a split-second decision. She’d bought him the desk where he’d be studying for the bar, after all. “So we just found out my dad had an affair like years ago, and we have another brother. Half-brother. He’s twelve, and my dad didn’t know about him either. And it’s kind of. Well. I mean, it’s always just been the three of us. Our mom died when I was a baby, I don’t remember her. And family, I mean, family’s like this really big deal for us. So I don’t know what to do. My brother wants to, like, adopt the kid, or something. But I just…I mean, my dad, he’s not exactly parent of the year, you know? I really think he’s better off without us. My little brother, I mean, I think he…”

  


It took her hand on his arm and what was probably her third repetition of his name for him to come back to the present. Because he’d just said the words, _My little brother_ , and he was freaking out a little at how naturally they’d come. _For Christ’s sake, I’m a big brother._ And because he grew up on the road the math is easy: from St. Louis to Windom isn’t even six hundred miles. Half a day if you’re careful.

  


“Sam,” Mrs. Warren was saying, “Sam, listen. This is a big deal, it’s okay that you’re upset about it, all right?”

  


Sam shrugged her off, then instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring all this up. It’s stupid, we’ll figure it out, don’t worry about it.”

  


She looked at him with big, dark eyes, a look of understanding and kindness and all kinds of things Sam didn’t want to deal with almost as much as he craved them.

  


She put the label on the last of the boxes and stacked them in a corner of the guest room, and turned back to him. “I can’t imagine what it feels like, what you’re going through. But I do know that you’re a good, smart person, Sam. I hope you realize that, okay? Family is important. You know that. It’s also going to drive you crazy, trying to balance what you want with what they want. But I’m going to tell you what I tell my kids, all right? Family is important but it’s not everything. You can’t let the people you’re related to dictate your life, okay, Sam? My husband, he tries to tell Zach and Becky what he wants them to do. And they barely talk to him anymore. The only reason Zach is here at all right now is because his father is in France. You hear me? You have to balance what you want with what they want. It’s what I’ve been telling Becky since she was out of diapers and it’s the reason she’s such a smart-mouthed know-it-all, bless her heart.”

  


Sam laughed. Becky was kind of a know-it-all but the thing was she could also admit when she was wrong. It was this amazing blend of confidence and humility that Sam had been trying to emulate since he met her a few months back. And she and Zach were as close, loved each other as fiercely, as any other siblings Sam had met, so he figured Mrs. Warren had done something right with them.

  


“All right, so,” Mrs Warren said, dusting off her hands. “These should get to your place about two days after you do so just plan to be home that day. I know California and people will steal them off your doorstep in a heartbeat if you’re not there.”

  


Sam laughed again, and adjusted his plans to not take off for Minnesota until after he’d signed for his furniture.

  


  


—

  


  


The Impala was parked outside the Milligan’s house, a small, neat split-level on a quiet street in Windom, Minnesota.

  


“Jesus,” Sam breathed, standing in the shadow of one of the gigantic oak trees that overhung the street. Waited until he was sure there was no movement inside the car, and then ducked to peer in the window. A map was unfolded over the passenger seat and a takeout bag in the footwell. So Dean had come here alone.

  


He marched up to the front door, knocked, and held his breath until it swung open.

  


“Can I help you?” Kate was…well, she looked like a mom. And Sam caught himself just before he voiced the incredulous laugh that had been lodged in his throat since he passed the _Welcome to Windom_ sign. He’d half expected Mary Winchester to open the door.

  


“Hi,” Sam said, finally aware that he was gaping like a loon and she looked about two seconds from pulling the door shut. “I’m sorry to bother you, I’m just. I’m looking for Dean Winchester, is he here?”

  


Her eyes widened, then she sucked in a breath, looked him up and down, and opened the door wider. “Sam?”

  


Quick footfalls, two sets of them, sounded in the hall behind her, and Kate half-turned, clearing his view. There was Dean, eyes bright, holding onto his smile until he cased the situation. Half a step in front of him, his shoulder fitting under Dean’s broad hand like it belonged there, was a little boy with a round face and unruly dark blond curls.

  


“Heya, Sammy,” Dean said softly, and Sam felt himself smile. Dean’s answering grin lit the room and he crouched down to meet the kid’s eyes. “Hey, Adam, go say hi to your big brother Sam.”

  


  


—

  


Sunday morning and the diner was bright and clean, cheerful and bustling, daily specials on the board boasting all manner of fresh, local produce. Sam wondered what it looked like at night, if it was one of those that turned into the kind of dive his brother loved so much. Or if it even stayed open past dinner. Wondered if the food was as good as it smelled, and how any of them were going to afford it. If any of them even had an appetite. They’d been here for all of fifteen minutes, and Sam was ready to bolt.

  


He was in a big corner booth with Kate and Adam, the kid in between the two of them, stacking cream cups and jelly packets as high as they’d go before they toppled and he started over again, his mother watching him like he might disappear any second. Both of them looked up every time the bell over the door chimed.

  


“Honey,” Kate said suddenly, reaching for her purse and pulling out a quarter. “You want to go pick out a song on the jukebox?”

  


The kid hesitated, looking between Sam and his mom, and Kate smiled at him. When he looked back at Sam, Sam almost choked because, okay, wow. That look was classic Dean. That look was _I might have to turn my back on the most precious thing in the universe for a minute or two, but I don’t have to like it._ That look was, _If you try anything, I will rip your lungs out so help me God._ For half a second, the kid was a superhero, ten feet tall with fists of steel. And then Sam blinked and he was just a little kid, slipping out from between his mom and his half-brother by way of ducking under the table and tripping over to the jukebox.

  


Sam watched him for a minute, turned back to Kate to find her eyes not on her son, but on him.

  


“He. Adam. He seems like a, uh, a really special kid.” It was the first he’d spoken to Kate without Dean there as intermediary, and damn but he was awkward. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and hoped she could tell how sincerely he meant it.

  


“He is.” She nodded and glanced at Adam, her eyes softening. “He is the light of my life.”

  


Sam wondered how long it had taken her to come around to that feeling. What her reaction had been when she found out she was pregnant and didn’t even have the father’s telephone number.

  


“Sam,” she said, making him startle. It was beyond weird to hear her talk to him, use his name like that. She was a stranger, but she said his name like she knew him. “I want you to know…whatever happens, whatever happens with Adam and — and John, however things unfold, I want you to know that my door will always be open to you and Dean. Anytime. All right? I want you to come to me, if you need to, or even if you just want to. I want Adam to know his brothers.”

  


Sam blinked, his gaze skittering away, seeking safe harbor somewhere familiar. He stared at the row of pies on display in a sparkling glass case, mentally rearranging them in order of Dean’s favorites, until he felt the blush subside from his face and he could swallow again. He looked back at her with a smile that felt like it might take over his face if he let it. He bit the inside of his cheek and nodded once. “Thanks.”

  


A Billy Joel song spilled from the jukebox, and like it was a signal Kate turned to see Adam walking back towards them, his shy smile making him look years younger, like he actually was only an eleven-year-old boy, and as Sam slid out of the booth to let him back in he caught the flash of a dimple on his little brother’s cheek. Then the door opened, and there was his big brother. There was their father.

  


“Sammy,” John said. Sam was too far away to hear him, but he saw the way John spoke his name, could see it come out as half a question. Sam pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed the diner with quick strides, like he had something in mind and he didn’t know where that came from, usually when he was in a hurry around his dad it was to put distance between them. Almost in arm’s reach he saw Dad blinking between him and Dean and Sam figured his shit out. Dean had promised he’d only bring John if he was sober, but their definitions of that word didn’t always line up. And Sam would be damned before he allowed his little brother’s first memory of his father to be steeped the stink of cheap whiskey.

  


But Dad smelled like nothing more than coffee and leather and gun oil, and Sam didn’t know who’d reached out first, only that his father’s arms were around him like a vise and over his shoulder he had a clear view of Dean’s face, a perfect mask of shock quickly melting into the kind of grin Sam used to delight in coaxing out of him, and Sam nearly laughed.

  


“Sammy,” Dad said, clapping his back before holding him away at arm’s length, looking him up and down. He’d been in his presence for all of ten minutes last month at Stanford, and Sam got the impression Dad hadn’t seen him at all. “Dean put you up to this?”

  


“No, sir,” Sam pressed his lips together, irritation sparking beneath his skin. He saw the smile slip from Dean’s face, the tense set of his jaw as his eyes flicked between Sam and Dad. Damage control mode, as familiar as breathing. Dad, for once, seemed to sense it as well. He dropped one hand from Sam’s shoulder and ducked his head, clearing his throat before speaking.

  


“You know, Sam, last time we were together, we had one hell of a fight. We both said some things…” Dad quickly squeezed his shoulder and stepped back. “It’s good to see you, son. Real good.”

  


“Yeah,” Sam’s chest was tight — so his dad could make him flip from pissed off to gratified almost beyond the ability to speak in a heartbeat; some things really didn’t change, big deal — “You too. But, Dad,” he said, half-turning, looking back toward their table. Kate and Adam were standing side by side, her arm around his shoulder, his hand clutching the hem of her blouse.

  


Sam supposed the noise and bustle of the diner went on around them, but the focus of his world narrowed and extraneous sensory input was filtered out. Like he was on a hunt. He recognized the feeling. And to complete the picture Dean was stepping up beside him, standing so close their shoulders were pressed together. Dean was a warm, solid presence at his side while in front of them their little brother, all of four foot six and solemn as a priest, held out his hand to shake their father’s. Kate was crying without seeming to realize it, her fingertips pressed to her lips.

  


“This is surreal,” Sam muttered. There was silence to his left and he turned to Dean. Dean, beaming like there was nothing at all wrong with the world. Sam elbowed him. “Dude.”

  


“What?” Dean asked, only sparing him a glance.

  


_You’re only supposed to look at_ me _like that,_ Sam didn’t say, just elbowed him again, jostling him until Dean retaliated with an almost-gentle ‘if we weren’t in public it’d be your ass in the grass’ kind of headlock and a knuckle sandwich, Sam’s yelp more like a laugh than a protest as Dean kept his arm around him and maneuvered them back through the after-church crowd, dodging waitresses andrambunctious, over-starched children alike, to join their family for breakfast.

  


—

_Now — August 2002_

  


“Dude, school starts crazy early for little kids. It’s still summer, how is that fair?” Sam says, and beside him Dean snorts into his beer.

  


They’re in Kate’s basement, sitting on the pull-out couch with their feet up on old boxes labeled _Kitchen_ and _Garage_ , the ancient TV fritzing in and out in front of them. Adam’s bedtime was an hour ago — big day tomorrow, first day of Seventh Grade — and Dad and Kate disappeared upstairs not long after.

  


“What?” Sam asks, snagging the bottle from Dean, looking at him curiously.

  


“Nothing. Just. ‘School starts early,’ you said it like I don’t know that. God, getting Dad to set us down somewhere on time to get you registered…” Dean takes back his beer and drains it, adds it to the pile of empties. Sam’s left empty-handed and hollow-chested.

  


In the two weeks he and Dean have been crashing here, playing rock-paper-scissors for the sagging couch and leaky air mattress while Dad comes and goes, Sam figures he’s suffered whiplash like he’s been in any ten car crashes. Because here’s his big brother, the one who wouldn’t fight to keep Sam home, here’s Dean making dinner on the nights Kate works late and getting Adam to eat his vegetables. And here’s his father, putting up actual money for a bundle of baseball tickets and almost promising he’ll make it back in time to go with them. It’s like….well. It’s like this:

  


“Sometimes,” Sam says, “Sometimes I resent Adam so much I can’t even look at him.”

  


If Dean is surprised by this admission, well, he probably shows it, but Sam’s too much of a coward to be looking at him while he says it.

  


“Sometimes I think about what he has, a mom and a house and the same two hundred kids in his class ’til he graduates, and it’s like, this…this perfect mockery of what I wanted, you know? We might have drove past this house a hundred times, Dean. It’s America, Inc. It’s….”

  


Sam trails off, feels Dean’s fingers on his arm. Just the tips, their rough callouses and blunt nails against his overchilled skin. It’s damp in the basement and the A/C is brutal. He can’t help his shiver, or the way he shakes his head when Dean tries to fix what he thinks is wrong. “Sammy, Dad did the best he—“

  


“No, Dean, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying…”

  


“You’re saying…?” Dean’s full-on holding on to his arm now, and Sam turns to look at him, hitches one knee up on the couch between them. His brother’s turned cowboy, in this past year, turned rogue. That beard he always wanted to grow is shading in the jawline that was too round to be rugged before this, and he has lines at his eyes no one under thirty usually sports. He’s beautiful, Sam thinks for the ten billionth time, and he wants to rend his clothes and scream at the sky for stealing a year of his brother’s transformation away from him.

  


It’s possible that this is the most alcohol Sam Winchester has ever imbibed.

  


Which of course doesn’t influence the truth of what he’s saying, but only the fact that he’s saying it at all.

  


“Hey, Dean?

  


“Yeah, Sam.”

  


“You know…last year, when…um. You know Adam?”

  


“Adam….short, kinda dorky, has the same dad as us? Sounds familiar. Why?”

  


“Jerk,” Sam elbows him.

  


A quiet, “Bitch,” is all the retaliation he gets.

  


“I just mean, I’m wondering. How do you feel about him? You love him, yeah?”

  


Dean starts like someone just stuck him with something pointy, then sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. Says finally, “Yeah, I guess so. I mean he’s my brother. Why?”

  


Oh, yeah, this is the part where Sam’s a little bolder than usual: he says, “You love him the way you love me?”

  


Dean’s like a popped balloon, all the air in him acting like it has someplace better to be, and the look he fixes on Sam is the best thing he’s seen in about a year. And the words are, also, the best thing he’s heard in recent memory. Dean says: “Are you fucking crazy?”

  


Sam grins, a lunatic smile and maybe the moon is full or maybe the world is just that bright right now. “No? I really don’t think I am.”

  


“Sammy, you’re. Jesus. You’re a pain in my ass, is what you are.” Dean reaches for something — the remote, another beer, a gun, doesn’t matter. Sam intercepts his hand and that’s about it, that’s all she needs to write. The story could end here, except that a couple more things happen.

  


Outside the window is dirty streetlight, barking dogs and a muffler that never should have seen this side of the twenty-first century. Inside is a boxy old TV set showing nothing but snow, and a couple of brothers navigating the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — until Dean tells Sam to shut up and it’s really just the springs and furrows of a horrendous sofa. Dad’s upstairs, and so is their half-brother. And that _half_ isn’t the important part, for all Sam feels like sometimes he wants to strangle to kid for his unwitting inheritance. Because Sam feels it as deeply, as least as deeply as Dean does: this Adam kid is for real. The ties that bind them together are for real. He has another brother, a younger brother, and that’s an honor and a responsibility he’ll bear, and gladly, for the rest of his life.

  


He wants Adam in his life. He wants that pull of big brother gravitas. He’s entranced by the kid; he’s already boasted about him to some nice matron in the supermarket. The thing is, though. The thing is.

  


The thing is, there’s this other meaning of that word. Of _Brother_. There’s this thing in his heart and his soul, in his hands and in his groin. There’s this thing where he’s a magnet and Dean is his polar North. That’s the thing. That’s the _thing_.

  


That’s the thing where Dean sends him off to college with a kiss. That’s the thing where Dean welcomes him home to a sway-backed couch with hips and lips and hands and _history._ Dean, you see, is the one pulling back from Sam, now, and asking like he did all those months ago. Asking and asking.

  


“Sam, Sammy, Sam why, why you doing this?”

  


And Sam answers, free as a bird and true as iron. “You know why, Dean. Got no choice.”

  


Dean’s nearly on his feet then, terror in his eyes and his hands hold Sam away, trembling. “Always got a choice, Sammy.”

  


He shouldn’t be impatient, he _knows_ that. But knowing and doing always get mixed up in his head and Sam’s pushing toward Dean, Kate’s cheap couch creaking beneath him, the weathered old nubs on the cushion giving way under his hands. “And choosing _you_ is no kind of choice, Dean, you get that? I had a hundred choices and I’d still choose you. Brother or not, no—“ he twists his hand in the hem of Dean’s shirt, holds him there when he tries to bolt. “No. Stay.”

  


There’s the kind of eye contact a movie usually covers with an orchestral uprising, because two people just staring at each other in the cold and quiet of a relative stranger’s basement is pretty much a recipe for awkward, right? Except for. Well. The thing is — it’s not awkward. Like, not at all. This past year, Sam’s been on the lookout for awkward (also for weird, unnatural, and strange) as he tried to fit into a new life, Sam can spot awkward from a mile away. And this, here?

  


This, where he’s smiling at his brother, a big stupid grin like he hasn’t shown since his sixteenth birthday, before Dean ruined it with the gift of a gun, when Dean let him pick the music and let him drive the back country roads just to celebrate that they’d both made it that far; alive and together and so happy about both that the night wasn’t long enough, _large_ enough, to contain them? Yeah. It’s actually not awkward or weird at all, the way their lips press together, not unnatural or strange the way Dean’s hand fits between his jaw and his ear, the way Sam’s hand is magnetically attracted to that long stretch of denim between Dean’s hip and his knee.

  


It’s not even anything. Not anything that has to mean they’re screwed up or the world is screwed up, nothing they have to adjust their world view to accommodate. It’s just. It is. It’s Sam and it’s Dean, it’s the two of them, and they’re happy. They’re happy, and they’re brothers, and _Maybe_ , Sam thinks, as Dean’s hand slides into his hair, _Maybe we’re just a little bit in love._  

 

 

Dean laughs and leans back against the couch cushions, and Sam nestles in beside him, fussing with the remote and settling on a glitchy snowed-out version of Lucy and Ricky’s twin-bed life. Dean’s running the backs of his fingers up and down Sam’s bare arm, the cool slide of the ring that used to be their mother’s skimming over the goosebumps that rise in the wake of being touched like this, of being loved by Dean this way, this much.

  


“Sammy,” Dean says, eons later. “I’m crazy about you, you know that, right?”

  


“I know that you’re crazy,” Sam says, and Dean digs an elbow into his side. Sam grins and soothes his teasing words with a kiss, marveling that he’s allowed to do this now. That Dean’s kissing him back. “Yeah,” Sam says against Dean’s lips, sealing the truth in a shared breath, taking from his brother and giving right back. “Yeah Dean, I know.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Recommended reading and viewing:
> 
> "[Dean & Sam: I'm Gonna Be Here 'Til I'm Nothing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGpJFPbdG04&list=PLspRBp6ChW4kHVgR_h0jnrXBjRlxYBICZ&index=16)" : the fanvid that introduced me to the beautiful song I used for the title.
> 
> "[Somewhere There's Blue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2307116/chapters/5076389)" by Linden. My unshakeable pre-series headcanon, ever since I read it I can't help feeling that anything I may every write will always technically be a sequel to this perfect gem of a story.


End file.
